The Man Who Devoured 55th Street

River to river, there are forty-six restaurants on this busy Manhattan crosstown street. To eat at each of them—some more than once—seems a fool’s errand, but that didn’t stop our hungry critic

The hostess at Christer’s, a frosty Finlander, refused to smile at any of my quips concerning the preparation of reindeer, the major food group of her native land. An inauspicious portent for the journey ahead, I thought. Silently, she led me to an unforgiving, straight-backed, schoolhouse-style chair in the only Scandinavian restaurant on 55th Street in Manhattan.

I detected a vaguely musty smell that did not conjure up images of glacial fjords. I noted a dizzying ambience borrowed from the smorgasbord school of interior design. I ordered food for a guest and me, and the waiter responded impatiently to each item: “Yeah…yeah…sure…sure.“ He returned twice to tell me the wine I wanted was out of stock, then recommended an ice wine to start. I declined respectfully, wondering if the pairing of intensely sweet wine and salad was a cherished Arctic Circle tradition.

As we ate, the air-conditioning system switched on and off repeatedly. When it was on, the room was cool and dry, good for the customers. When it was off, the temperature and humidity quickly rose, good for the desiccated Danish meatballs (here identified as veal fricadelles). It was too soon for despair, but I could not drive away an ominous thought: Forty-five more restaurants to go.

I thought it would be fun, a sweet little LifeSaver of an assignment. In the space of a month—this past August—I would eat at every restaurant on a single street in Manhattan. It would be my short-haul version of the Lewis and Clark expedition, but instead of trekking from ocean to ocean (OK, they started a few miles inland) I would make my way across Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson. I would follow an unblazed trail of cream sauces, sushi specials, pastas- of-the-day and pizza slices.

The idea took form when I realized the question I’m most asked is whether a person could eat in every restaurant in New York City in a lifetime. The answer is that it’s impossible, because the city has about 18,000 restaurants and every year about a thousand of them go out of business and are replaced by a thousand more. The attempt would be the culinary equivalent of Sisyphus vainly trying to push that rock up a hill. The parallel becomes even more appropriate when you realize Sisyphus was trapped in hell and the ambitious eater would have to dine on Staten Island. The goal of eating everywhere is intriguing, not because it is feasible but because it is quixotic, representing the sort of escapade we New Yorkers wish we could undertake. Our lives are sadly lacking in real exploits; we own SUVs, but all we do is move them from curb to curb to comply with alternate-side- of-the-street-parking regulations.

I researched the streets in neighborhoods filled with restaurants. Harlem is brimming with southern cooking, which meant I’d be eating bread pudding daily. Greenwich Village is too irregular; because of the twisting alleys, I feared I would become hopelessly lost and end up knocking on Bob Dylan’s door, asking for directions. Streets that start on the Upper West or Upper East Side are obstructed by Central Park, which goes from 59th Street to the southern edge of Harlem; the park takes up potential restaurant space with lakes, trails, ball fields, trees and statues, not entirely undesirable but certainly an unfortunate waste of culinary opportunities.

Only Midtown had the scope and singularity of purpose, and I soon realized 55th was unsurpassed. It had Lespinasse, La Caravelle and La Côte Basque, representatives of the delu French school of dining; Osteria del Circo, the semi-Italianate child of the semi-French Le Cirque 2000; Sugiyama, for kaiseki, to cite one of its authentically confusing Japanese concepts; Michael’s, famed for California cuisine but now primarily niche-marketed as a playground of publishing power breakfasts; Milos, the Greek restaurant featuring grilled fish costing more than a plane ticket to Athens; Shun Lee Palace, New York’s high temple of nonspecific Chinese cuisine; and, irresistibly, Al’s Soup Kitchen International, the original Soup Nazi of Seinfeld fame.

I was dazed after I walked the length of 55th Street, which is precisely two miles long, and determined that forty-six establishments met my definition of a genuine restaurant—a dining area inside. Almost as surprising was the distribution: While 55th Street encompasses fifteen blocks, only six contain restaurants. The block between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) is one-fifth of a mile long and has twenty-two of them. They’re so closely packed you can dine at a window table in a second-floor restaurant and stare across the street at the second- floor window table where you ate the night before.

I came upon no steak houses, which depressed me, and no Indian, Vietnamese or Thai food. I was cheered to find but one chain restaurant, Au Bon Pain. Overall, the street was a certifiable New York classic, filled with the kinds of timeless restaurants that have been popular for decades and show no signs of going away.

I did not have forty-six dining experiences, even though I counted forty-six restaurants. I ate at three of the restaurants twice, because they seemed unexpectedly promising. None of the second meals went as well as the first. One place never opened for business. That put my total number of visits at forty-eight. I promised myself I’d remain stalwart, but I moaned after a dinner at La Côte Basque consisting of twin quenelles in two sauces, tournedos Rossini and tarte Tatin with ice cream. (On the menu it was sorbet au Calvados, but it sure tasted like ice cream.) I consumed three breakfasts, twenty lunches and nineteen dinners. That adds up to forty-two meals. The remaining six consisted of snacks I put away one morning in a little more than an hour, going from place to place ordering Danish and coffee. A Danish pastry is called a sweet roll in many regions, but here in New York we refer to it by the correct name.

I started my snacking at the New Lex Coffee Shop. The counterman poked his finger into a cellophane-wrapped Danish and said, “Eh, they’re not so good. How about a doughnut?“ The doughnut was gigantic, with thick white icing, and tasted like birthday cake.

The cheese Danish at C’est Bon Café was basic coffee-cart quality, whereas the mini-Danish at Lyn’s Café delivered three flaky bites for eighty-five cents. Fancy Gourmet, a kind of deli-grocery combination, was boiling hot, and the core temperature of the tuna in the salad bar was approaching thermonuclear levels. No Danish was sold, so I settled for a scone that was so stale and hard I could barely gnaw off a few crumbs. I took it outside, held it over my head and dropped it on the sidewalk, where it shattered into five parts. At Pan Bagnat, the only Danish remaining in the case was filled with raisins, a fruit best utilized in trail mix. Still, it was a perfect, buttery pastry with a satisfying crunch. The only drawback to dining at Pan Bagnat is that the front doors open inward, which means that in a fire everybody panics, piles up at the doors and perishes. How very French. Au Bon Pain doesn’t have Danish, only “croissants“ that resemble Danish. I had a “cinnamon-raisin croissant,“ which was gooey and sticky.

The only meal on 55th Street that approached perfection was at Milos, the upscale equivalent of a Greek seaside spot patronized by yachtsmen rowed ashore in their yawls. The fish were on ice, and when I looked at them, they looked back as if to say, “You can’t afford me.“ My whole pageot, a snapper, went for almost $70. It was gently grilled with a touch of olive oil and lemon juice and exhibited the fragrant softness and immaculate freshness so prized in Mediterranean cuisine.

Side dishes are extra, but they’re worth the cost, particularly the grilled eggplant and zucchini and a dessert of the creamiest possible yogurt topped with the richest possible honey. Milos is everything Greek restaurants that try to extend their moussaka with extra flour are not. The owner is Costas Spiliadis, who opened the first Milos in Montreal and came to New York five years ago. The 55th Street restaurant is more spacious and elegant than the original, but the fish on ice, the exposed ductwork and the wide-plank flooring are nearly identical. A single flaw in my dinner was a fanciful presentation of crabmeat from Ingrid Bengis, our nation’s latest celebrity seafood purveyor. It had been molded and topped with a thick layer of homemade mayonnaise. I was reminded of Christmas-cocktail-party food.

Most of my friends who learned of this adventure in unlimited eating asked to join me at La Côte Basque, venerated for its classic French cooking. Book a table here if you require a cassoulet—stewed beans laced with peasant meats—on Bastille Day, which is July 14. La Côte Basque’s menu rarely changes, irrespective of the season, and the food does not lighten up, regardless of the temperature.

My appetizer consisted of those two quenelles, or fish dumplings. They were moist and velvety, extremely refined, but nothing else was. The dumplings were separated by a dike of mashed potatoes intended to keep the saffron and lobster sauces apart and topped with a scattering of rubbery bay scallops. The tournedos Rossini were made from unexceptional ingredients: The fillet of beef, sautéed foie gras and chopped-truff le sauce were reminiscent of an era when prosperous French bureaucrats dined lavishly but not wonderfully at respectable commercial hotels.

La Caravelle, practically across the street, is also a long-established French luxury restaurant, but while La Côte Basque spurns change, La Caravelle is forever locked in a struggle to achieve it. The latest chef, Troy Dupuy, intense and talented, is preparing such classics as crabmeat in herb dressing and pike quenelles, as well as his own fanciful creations, including John Dory in lemon-thyme consommé and tiny soft-shell crabs with cauliflower sauce. (To summarize, the crabmeat couldn’t have been better, the quenelles desperately needed salt, the lemon-thyme consommé was sublime but unduly understated, and the crabs were strikingly sweet.)

La Caravelle is a jewel box of a restaurant, perhaps the most feminine in the city. The colors are soft and flattering, the tiny fresh roses at each table an extravagance, the murals of old Paris warming. Couples sit side by side at spacious banquettes and sip La Caravelle’s interpretation of the mojito, here made with vodka (instead of rum) and a splash of champagne. It was my favorite 55th Street drink.

Entirely without opulence is neighboring La Bonne Soupe. In the ’70s, adventurous Americans traveling to Paris without money diligently followed the Arthur Frommer budget guides, and La Bonne Soupe would have come highly recommended. It’s shabby, with chipped plaster walls, scarred floors, wobbly tables, unkempt rest rooms and unreliable seats. As I dined on the tiny outdoor balcony, the green metal chair of a woman at the next table collapsed under her. The chewy snails came in lots of salty garlic butter, the croque-monsieur was thick and cheesy, and the steak-frites was prepared with skirt steak—juicy and flavorful but also gamy, perhaps more prized by Parisians than New Yorkers.

Adrienne, the main dining room of the Peninsula Hotel, was open only for lunch in August and almost empty the day I arrived. The wine list, filled with too-old whites and misprinted vintage dates, was a mess. I ended up drinking a red I didn’t want. Whenever wine wasn’t involved, the staff knew its job. I don’t recall ever having my napkin folded so often or so well.

The food was an overly intellectualized global take on modern French. A veal-and- squab carpaccio was a terrific idea, a weightless creation with flavors so complex I was reminded of pâté. My “seafood and fennel“ broth had little resemblance to fish soup; a seared duck breast-and-confit combination turned out to be shredded duck wrapped in reddish meat somewhat like rolled beef, a standby of old Jewish delicatessens; and the shredding theme persevered with a cocoa-dusted veal shank that had the consistency of Cuban ropa vieja. My dessert of cactus-pear consommé came with candied kumquats, which would have been fine had I not already eaten them with the duck. A few weeks after my visit, Adrienne disappeared. The space was renamed Fives, and a new menu appeared, promoted as “Atlantic Rim meets classic French.“ Though obscure, this fusion cuisine has been spotted at Cafe La Playa on Highway 35 in Mantoloking, New Jersey.

The busiest luncheon spot on 55th Street is Pump Energy Food, which identifies itself as a “physical-fitness restaurant.“ Flyers claim the food “makes you look great.“ Didn’t work with me. A second promise is that the food will “save you time in the gym.“ Not if you don’t go to one.

Pump Energy cuisine is devoid of sugar, salt, oil, butter and lots more I admire. I had the baked falafel, consisting of three squashed balls of ground chickpeas prepared like dry, grainy, sugar-free, health-food-store cookies. The walls are filled with signed tributes from people who tend to identify themselves as “fitness personalities.“ Also displayed is an unsigned photo of Jerry Lee Lewis pounding the piano with his toes, a feat of dexterity I cannot believe was fueled by falafel.

The latest restaurant to open on 55th is Angelo’s Pizza, which belongs to a new generation of New York pizzerias trying to imitate the magnificent thin-crust pizzas that come out of ancient coal-burning ovens in obscure Italian neighborhoods people like me can’t find. Those pies are smoky and crispy, with burned spots, while the pie that arrived at my table from the gas-fired oven at Angelo’s wasn’t much different from flatbread. It was topped with a little mozzarella, a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce and basil leaves. I greatly preferred Pronto Pizza’s “fuhgeddaboudit“ pie, which has a chicken-marsala topping. As I was walking out, I told the proud creator of the “fuhgeddaboudit“ concept that I loved my slice but would have preferred his chicken marsala over rice. He wasn’t insulted. I can’t imagine a French chef taking criticism that well.

The oldest restaurant on 55th, in feeling if not in fact, is the King Cole Bar of the St. Regis Hotel, where I ate an astonishingly expensive lunch that concluded with a $7 cup of tea. This bar is best on quiet afternoons, when the courtly, aging waiters have time to fuss over the few customers who have stopped in. The lure is not the stuffy although satisfactory food but the Maield Parrish mural of Old King Cole, brought over from the defunct Knickerbocker Hotel.

The street has three Irish pubs, and I had lunch at each. At McGee’s, I ordered Dublin fish-and-chips, which was deep-fried cod cooked to mush, probably a result of the fresh cod not being very fresh. Manhattan Country Club, more downscale than the spiffy McGee’s, displayed cheaply framed posters of Ireland on the wall, the kind that recall frat houses with nonexistent decorating budgets. My waitress watched suspiciously as I got up from my table to study the expose yourself to Ireland poster showing an Irishman in an overcoat flashing a herd of cows. She made it clear I had to return to my table, even though I protested that such art deserved an audience.

I ordered fish-and-chips and couldn’t eat the fish, which was hot, chewy and nasty. The waitress, in an unanticipated reversal of attitude, sweetly said she would happily replace it. I said how lovely that would be, and she snarled, “So, really, what’s wrong with it?“ I stammered an apology and asked for the check. She brought it and said, again bubbly, “You know, I could have gotten you something else.“ I fled this severely disturbed establishment. Apparently, others did, too. In mid-September, Manhattan Country Club closed permanently; the artwork was not auctioned off.

Jimmy Walker’s, the last of the three Irish drinking spots, was the most genuine. The guy seated at the bar to my right was eating a club sandwich and chatting up the redheaded barmaid, who was as perfectly Irish as you can get. (By her accent, I’d say outskirts-of-Dublin born.) The guy on my left smoked incessantly, had a cough so terrible he nearly toppled from his stool with each hack and continually blew his nose. The joint made me nostalgic for my old sportswriting days. I ordered the broiled-seafood combination, which featured a bounty of thawed products. The French fries, however, were terrific, the salty, crunchy, nearly hollow kind that used to come in paper cones at carnivals.

I had a satisfying $9.95 “exotic lunch buffet“ at Al-Baraka, although the Mediterranean and Turkish cuisine seemed generic Middle Eastern to me. The ambience suffered from an overabundance of vegans pouring in and driving the pleasant, hardworking staff crazy with impossible demands to know minute details about ingredients, particularly what went into the lentil soup. I always say if you want to keep crackpots from your restaurant, don’t serve lentils.

I went to a pair of restaurants I most emphatically cannot recommend. La Vineria is an undersize, rustic-appearing wine bar and trattoria, the kind more likely to be found in the Village than in Midtown. The wineglasses were good, but the wine service wasn’t. I ordered a 1998 Prunotto Pian Romualdo Barbera, a favorite of mine, and out came the ’97. I asked for the correct wine, and a manager informed me that the ’97 was better and I was fortunate to have it. He was wrong all around. To compound the incompetence, the wine arrived very warm. I drank it with a veal paillard I barely touched once I noticed a cook in the open kitchen playing with an identical piece of veal, flipping it from hand to hand.

My problem with Kikku, located on the second floor of a second-rate apartment building, was that the fish on my sushi platter was unacceptably and dangerously warm. I barely touched any of it, although I did admire the cool, complimentary orange slices that followed.

I enjoyed Shallots NY, even though the cuisine was an uninspired kosher version of trendy American food—I’m still wondering about the missing “truffle carpaccio“ in my cauliflower soup. (To be honest, I’ve no idea what a truffle carpaccio might be.) The main attraction of this restaurant, I suspect, are the attractive shiksas (non-Jews to you) on staff, including a tall, slinky, pixieish, dark-haired bombshell hostess from Kraków and a tall, blond, shiny, aspiring actress from New England. The actress, who waited on my table, admitted not knowing the difference between milchedig and flayshedig, so I suggested a quick course in Orthodox customs. Proudly unveiling a new pickup line, I said, “C’mon to my place, honey, and I’ll teach you the kosher dietary laws.“ She replied, “That sounds really hot,“ and walked away.

By reputation, Shun Lee Palace and Sugiyama are New York’s top Chinese and Japanese restaurants, landmarks of their respective cuisines.

The specialty of Sugiyama is the kaiseki, a tasting menu presumably at its best served omakase-style, which means the chef prepares whatever he wishes from superior ingredients. I told the waiter I would pay $100 for six courses chosen by the chef. The first course was so spectacular I thought I might change my stodgy thinking about Japanese food, which is that I enjoy only such standards as sushi, yakitori, sashimi and tempura. Two items shared a rectangular plate. The first was a large cube of monkfish pâté, which is fishy foie gras. The second was a cup of clear, cool bonito broth containing lotus seeds encapsulated in gelatin. I always find monkfish pâté too oily, heavy and strong, and I wasn’t eager for cold fish broth laced with gel caps. Here, the pâté had been blended with tofu to create a wonderfully delicate monkfish soufflé, and the soup was sharp, fragrant and bracing. Even the slithery lotus seeds were fun to munch.

After that I was unimpressed. I found the uni (sea urchin) too strong, an oyster too mushy, a cooked half lobster tough and chewy. Repetition also troubled me. A second soup appeared to be a warm version of the first, and I received two huge pieces of barbecued-eel sushi when one would have been plenty. I also believe two pieces of fluke-fin sushi is excessive. None would have satisfied me.

Of the six Japanese restaurants on 55th Street, I would happily return to Onigashima. I ordered the omakase sashimi plate for $32 and got fresh, vibrant fish, although the chef seemed a little too fond of cuddling his raw fish in overpowering lemon slices. Customers should insist on sitting in the front room, which is cheerful; I was put in the back, where the decor includes a frayed, stained carpet coming up at the seams and a devil mask hanging on the wall.

Except at Sugiyama and Onigashima, I ate a lot of inferior fish; bad sushi is demoralizing, like a cheap suit. At East, notable for a tall Japanese hostess with the most unnatural red hair north of the Lower East Side, only the salmon sushi was fresh. At Menchanko-Tei, well-regarded for dishing up Japanese cuisine of the non-haute variety, the food was credible, although the pork pot stickers could have been more savory and the steamed shrimp dumplings reminded me of gnocchi. Fu Ji, far more upscale in appearance, was absolutely empty at 7:30 on a Monday night. I couldn’t understand how such a clean, attractive establishment could have no customers, but after eating, I understood. Here I had inedible tempura (cold, with undercooked vegetables) and tough sushi, plus yakitori and negimaki that I suspected were precooked and microwaved.

Almost side-by-side, steps apart, are the extremes of Chinese dining. East Ocean is an eat-in/take-out joint offering food in Styrofoam. I ordered sweet-and-sour pork with pork fried rice, a particularly unhealthy luncheon combination. The breaded pork, precooked well before my arrival, was exceptionally greasy, and the sauce was bright red, staggeringly sweet and unsour.

Shun Lee Palace’s main dining room beautifully combines understated New York style with Oriental flights of fancy. I particularly admired a dragon light fixture that snakes across the ceiling. Although regional dishes aren’t what the restaurant does best, the lion’s-head casserole (Shanghai meatballs with cabbage) was so savory I immediately felt my steadfast attachment to meatballs with spaghetti weakening. Few Chinese restaurants come close to the quality of the chef’s specials at Shun Lee Palace, and some dishes defy classification. I suppose grilled scallops covered with a warm custard can be described as French- Chinese fantasy fusion.

It’s standard for Chinese restaurants to use the dark meat of chicken in deep-fried, saut éed or sauce-covered preparations, hoping the absence of white meat goes unnoticed, but here the dark meat in the chan-do chicken was silken and the spicing so subtle I knew I had journeyed not only into but beyond the familiar world of five-spice powder. Only the bland “vegetable duck pie,“ deep-fried tofu skin and chopped vegetables prepared in imitation of Peking duck, was disappointing. Many of the serving platters came decorated with frogs, birds and fish carved from vegetables, an embellishment usually seen only at banquets.

For an optimistic moment, I thought Tang Pavilion might equal Shun Lee Palace. The cooking is purported to be from Shanghai and Suzhou (a city near Shanghai), but my first dish, Suzhou roast duck, didn’t impress me with its authenticity. Instead of the expected marinated bony duck, I got moist, tender duck breast in a slightly sweet barbecue sauce garnished with maraschino cherries and pineapple slices. Still, the duck was so delicious I went back, only to be let down. The marinated jellyfish had a nice flavor but was cut so thick I felt as though I were chomping on rope, not chewing on threads, and the soup dumplings contained almost no soup.

Lunch at Imperial Dragon was an unexpected experience: I had no complaint with my “crispy golden tender“ sesame chicken, but I felt overwhelmed by the feverish activity around me. At least seven staff members bustled about waiting on the three occupied tables, deliveries from trucks parked on the street continually came through the front door, and at one point a motorist stuck his head in and yelled for the driver who was blocking the street to hurry up and move his truck. I was neither served nor offered tea at the Shanghai Tea Garden, but that’s not the reason I departed with ambivalent feelings. The talented pastry specialist held up his end of the cooking but was repeatedly let down by the fillings guy.

Crabmeat-and-pork soup dumplings had a lovely appearance, but the soup hinted at Dinty Moore. The turnip cakes featured a buttery shortcake exterior, but the turnips within were even more bland than turnips tend to be. The beautifully fried scallion pancakes amounted to nothing but crunch. I did admire the fried bananas, though. A true team effort.

I spent an entire month with little more than a single idea on my mind: I’m full. I don’t claim to be profoundly reflective, but usually I can come up with deeper thoughts than that. Generally, full is a desirable state. It’s an entirely pleasant sensation that envelops the well-off following a satisfying dinner. Shoes are removed, ties loosened, belts come back a notch. Sighs of contentment follow.

To be incessantly full, as I was, is an entirely different experience. It reminded me of an hour I once spent in a sensory-deprivation tank, semisubmerged in warm saltwater. Fullness did more than eliminate hunger pangs. It deadened my senses. I walked 55th Street stiffly, seeing and hearing little. I was an overstuffed golem, single-mindedly fixated on the business at hand.

One afternoon I found myself walking into Ben Ash, a delicatessen on Seventh Avenue with a side entrance on 55th. (I didn’t count it among my forty-six restaurants.) I asked for a slice of cheesecake, which would seem to be the most wrongheaded decision a full person could make. I was weary of uninspired takes on tiramisu. I was worn down by the overly intellectualized French pastries—although La Caravelle’s chocolate-basil tart cannot be faulted. I believed I wanted a huge hunk of cheesecake. I was too full to think straight.

After finishing most of it, I was even more full. I don’t expect compassion. I’m not sure I expect anybody to understand. I only know that I wasn’t myself. I was a pitcher incapable of getting his curveball over the plate, a navy pilot unable to land on a carrier deck anymore. An essential part of my life was missing. For an entire month, I wanted my appetite back.

I had breakfast at Michael’s, which placed me in proximity to the literary elite. Once a forerunner of the California- cuisine movement, Michael’s has of late become more celebrated for its exclusive (and legendarily expensive) breakfasts. Four other tables were occupied. Three contained agents and editors speaking warmly of writers I’m sure they secretly hated. At another a young fellow was entertaining two female publicists. I knew they were publicists because they had unnaturally streaked blond hair.

I ordered the “New York steak and eggs“ for $19.95. Most people would assume a steak with a New York pedigree would be a strip sirloin, but my small piece of meat tasted like a blade steak, which is chuck. The dense toast, made from walnut bread, was fine with the eggs but would have been better suited to a cheese course.

Across the street, at the Shoreham boutique hotel, I went for the $13 ham-and- cheese omelette. It was soft inside but overcooked outside and came with unbuttered toast and a dry potato pancake. A few bits of fruit lent desperately needed moisture. Everything was heaped on a plain white plate so small the potato pancake had to sit atop the egg. If you happen to be wistful for airline breakfasts, this is the perfect place to indulge your nostalgia.

I preferred the $3.25 cheese-omelette combo at Caffe Buon Giorno, coffee included. The home fries were inedible, but at least the toast came with butter.

The finest Italian restaurant on 55th Street is Osteria del Circo, although it isn’t very Italian, not with so much butter in so many recipes. I admire Circo because it consistently demonstrates respect for its customers. At many of the other Italian establishments, I suspected the waiters were winking as they brought out food that shouldn’t be tolerated by Italians or anybody else.

The design, by Adam Tihany, is an homage to the big top: colorful, artistic and cartoonish. When the mechanical, Giacometti-like circus characters twirl overhead, Circo feels lively even when it is empty. Everybody, myself included, loves the overly rich butter-and-sage ricotta-and- spinach ravioli made according to the recipe of Egidiana Maccioni, the wife of Sirio Maccioni of Le Cirque fame and the mother of the three brothers who run Circo. The light, rustic gnocchi is a more sensible choice, and so is a pristine lobster- and-panzanella (soaked bread) salad. Sea bass, cooked in a crust, came out too salty, but the halibut was so satiny and soft my wife said it reminded her of custard. Circo’s signature dessert is bomboloni e cappuccino, a cute idea at its moment of creation but now an inspired one, given the recent rise in popularity in this country of both freshly made doughnuts (Krispy Kreme) and extra-fatty cold coffee drinks (Starbucks).

Some of the other Italian food on 55th was enjoyable. I stopped for lunch at Giovanni and had a mascarpone-and-spinach risotto so creamy and desirable I booked a table for dinner. The captain brought out my $29.75 Arctic-char special at the same time as my pasta, then informed me I’d wanted them together. At my insistence, the fish went back to the kitchen. There it was kept piping hot for twenty minutes, then returned with great ceremony, perhaps in the hope I wouldn’t notice how it had deteriorated into gruel. I concede that the application of high heat for such an extended period nicely concentrated the red-wine sauce.

At Castellano, I ordered vitello tonnato, a Piedmontese classic of slices of veal in tuna sauce. The veal was pink and silken. The sauce was a bracing counterpoint. Perfect. Next came chunks of horribly overcooked liver in a thick brown sauce plopped between polenta slices that were little but cornmeal and water. The ultimate unsavory metaphor came to mind: Alpo on a plate.

Maristella, perhaps the most obscure of the 55th Street Italian collection, appears to specialize in dishes that have little to do with their menu descriptions. Prosciutto with fresh mozzarella turned out to be mozzarella with peppers topped with bits of ground-up prosciutto, basically Italian bacon bits. Tartufo, promised with “chocolate, crushed caramelized peanuts,“ had no peanuts. Maristella is known for its singing waitstaff, but the single singing waiter on duty did not perform until the customers were on their way out. I asked him why and he told me he had been too busy serving to sing. It sort of made sense.

Da Antonio had Mr. Lenny Dell at the piano, an abundance of complimentary appetizers (including caponata, a Sicilian spread) and a bustling bar a friend and I decided was filled with aging flight attendants. Most of the specials weren’t Italian, and the food didn’t taste Italian, but we didn’t care. That caponata was so irresistible we kept spreading it on bread. I returned the first bottle of wine, a too-old white. Our waiter brought it to the maître d’, who took a sip and exclaimed, “I spit it out!“ Rather than present a wearying list of disappointments, I will point out in the spirit of goodwill established by the maître d’ that the sea bass was fresh and nicely prepared and I loved the dill-and- cucumber concoction the kitchen slathered on even though I’d ordered the fish without sauce.

Trattoria del Corso is a sister restaurant to La Vineria, the wine bar with the Barbera I didn’t want to drink. Here, the waitstaff was particularly accommodating. The wine I asked for wasn’t in stock, so my waiter walked over to La Vineria to borrow a bottle. He came back explaining apologetically that it was too hot to drink. (I could have warned him that hot wine is La Vineria’s specialty.) I asked him about the relationship between the two restaurants and he replied, “Different management but same big mama.“

The chef at Corso is an Italian with his heart entrenched in ’70s American cuisine. In addition to Italian specialties, he offers strawberries with radicchio salad and pours raspberry vinaigrette on mesclun salad. Here the kiwi tart lives on. A salad of shaved baby artichokes in a thick dressing made from pureed avocado, lemon and olive oil was unexpectedly alluring, and I also appreciated the simplicity of two of the pastas, one made with sausage and shaved artichokes and the other with clams and chopped tomatoes. On a second visit, the success rate declined. Asparagus was thick and tough, grated Pecorino Romano cheese of no distinction seemed to be landing on everything, and the spaghetti all’amatriciana was so heavy I almost toppled from my chair.

Allegria is an uninspired spot with no apparent purpose except to try to hit the jackpot with the millions of New Yorkers who cannot resist the lure of an Italian menu. Our waiter was inefficient, the soft bread had its roots in southern biscuit-making, and I can’t say I admired chopped cold salad over shrimp and warm beans, although the shrimp were properly grilled. While I was eating lunch, a spirited rendition of “Happy Birthday“ unexpectedly broke out over the sound system, even though nobody was celebrating such an event.

The most unsatisfactory Italian food, without a doubt, was at Nocello, a bastion of pre-theater dining that seems to have forgotten how to do much except heap colossal quantites of mediocre food on tables before the 7:45 p.m. mass exodus. The tomato sauce was bland, no grated Parmesan cheese came with the pastas, and the same vegetables garnished every plate. I ordered tortoni, and as my waiter brought it to the table, I watched him flicking off bits of ice. This was a first for me: dessert with freezer burn.

I didn’t get to Al’s Soup Kitchen International. Throughout August and well into September, it remained so securely locked up I feared it had gone out of business. A protective metal grate was securely in place, and old newspapers were taped to the glass doors.

Lespinasse, the Versailles-like showplace of chef Christian Delouvrier in the St. Regis Hotel, was closed throughout August but reopened the first week of September. I was so pleased to see a half bottle of the magnificent 1990 Zind- Humbrecht Muscat on the wine list for a mere $25 that I ordered it to drink with an appetizer of sautéed foie gras. The sommelier stood by my table for almost five minutes, lecturing me on everything I already knew about the wine, then forgot to pour any while I ate. Lespinasse’s foie gras is excellent. So is its ice water. I just can’t recommend them as a combination.

Two entrées were the most spectacular food I tasted on 55th Street. The confit of baby pig was nothing but melting succulence. Rabbit came two ways—roasted rack and loin with a potato-onion tart, and braised leg with spring vegetables. Often, two-way dishes are a mistake because one way turns out so much better than the other. Not here. So fresh were the vegetables, I overlooked a distracting contradiction: I was eating spring vegetables in late summer.

Lespinasse did much to restore my confidence in Midtown dining, which by then needed a boost. The setbacks had been abundant, perhaps brought about by my belief that New York is the greatest restaurant city in the world and therefore a street at its very center should showcase its culinary artistry. The renowned restaurants did well, but proximity to them did nothing to lift the lesser establishments out of mediocrity. Perhaps I had been too optimistic. I was sorry not to have stumbled upon a mom-and-pop place with cooking that melts your heart and a check so modest you immediately book a table for the upcoming Saturday night. That’s a lot to ask of a street where the rents are so staggeringly high Mom and Pop would need an investment banker in the family in order to survive.

I have to say this, though: I did it. I got to the end of the trail, overfed but unbowed. I’m not expecting any certificates of appreciation, but as I recall, neither were Lewis and Clark celebrated in their lifetimes.

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